“President Bush then went to India. He was met with protests there. As a result most Americans spent the day on hold with computer problems.”
Conan O’Brien
“President Bush’s approval rating has fallen to an all time low of 34%. In fact, his ratings are so low his new Secret Service code name is ‘NBC.’”
Jay Leno
NewMexiKen saw Good Night, And Good Luck this evening. One of the five films nominated for best picture, the story centers around newscaster Edward R. Murrow’s conflict with Senator Joe McCarthy in 1953-1954.
While a fine film with excellent acting — David Strathairn is just remarkable as Murrow — the film falls short. The characters are never really developed; the story is thin. Too much it seems is left to our knowledge of the actual events and historical context. For example, while we know from the beginning that Murrow and his crew dislike McCarthy — and well that they should — we never really see the conflict develop. In fact, the only real tension in the film is the conflict that develops between Murrow and CBS chairman William Paley (played admirably by Frank Langella). That’s not enough.
While genuine, and thankfully not an Oliver Stone historical travesty, Good Night, And Good Luck lacks the dramatic power to be best picture.
Did you know iTunes can print jewel case inserts, song listings and album listings of your playlists? With album art? As a collage?
A sample jewel box from NewMexiKen’s playlist of recent Billboard Hot 100 number ones. Took about 11 seconds.
In iTunes:
1. Highlight the playlist you want to use.
2. Click on the File drop down menu.
3. Select Print (at the bottom of the drop down).
4. Choose the type of print you want. Voila!
Of course, album artwork is only available if you have added it to the tracks.
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During Judiciary Committee Mark-up this morning, [Senator] Dianne Feinstein’s cellphone went off while she was giving her statement on comprehensive immigration reform.
Her ringtone? “California,” the theme from “The OC.”
We’ve been on the run
Driving in the sun
Looking out for #1
California here we come
Right back where we started from
Hustlers grab your guns
Your shadow weighs a ton
Driving down the 101
California here we come
Right back where we started from
California!
Here we come!
Boy, 12, gums up pricey DIA artwork
You might think that a museum wouldn’t have to tell visitors not to stick chewing gum on the art. But you would be wrong — as the Detroit Institute of Arts just found out. At the DIA on Friday, a mischievous 12-year-old boy visiting the museum with a school group took a piece of barely chewed Wrigley’s Extra Polar Ice out of his mouth and stuck it on Helen Frankenthaler’s 1963 abstract painting “The Bay,” damaging one of the most important modern paintings in the museum’s collection and a landmark picture in the artist’s output. Though the picture, acquired by the DIA in 1965 and worth an estimated $1.5 million, is expected to make a full recovery, the episode reinforces just how vulnerable priceless works of art remain when displayed publicly — and what can happen when common sense takes a backseat to impulsive delinquency.
Click the link to see the artwork and read more.
There was actually measurable precipitation in Albuquerque last evening; third time since October.
One-hundredth of an inch!
Which doesn’t sound like much (because it isn’t much), but it is one-fifteenth of the total for the past 123 days.
NOTICE: Due to Presidential Executive Orders, the National Security Agency may have read this email without warning, warrant, or notice. They may do this without any judicial or legislative oversight. You have no recourse nor protection save to call for the impeachment of the current President.
Grandma: Who is that? What’s the commotion about?
Teen girl: It’s Paris Hilton.
Grandma: Who is that?
Teen girl: She’s a media blowjob, Nana. Let’s get a move on, we’re late and Daddy’s waiting for us at the hotel.
“It’s been four years since Richard Reid attempted to set fire to his explosive shoes on that Paris-Miami flight, and thanks to him we still do our little dance in stocking feet through airport security, a testimony to the power of the individual to gum up the works for millions of others.”
Garrison Keillor, in a column where he advocates a Constitutional amendment requiring two years of active duty in the military to be eligible to serve as president.
Grace Needleman of Cape Elizabeth, Maine, is reporting a major free-agent signing — Red Sox GM Theo Epstein as her senior prom date on May 6.
Needleman, who brought a “Will you go to the prom with me?” sign to Red Sox training camp in Fort Myers, Fla., says Epstein gave her his autograph and told her yes.
“I’m not really picky, and I don’t need anything special,” Needleman, 17, told ESPN2’s “Cold Pizza” of her dating requirements. “Limo? It will be a great entrance anyway, so it won’t really matter what car we bring.”
Malcolm Gladwell from an exchange with ESPN’s Bill Simmons:
As for your (very kind) question about my writing, I’m not sure I can answer that either, except to say that I really love writing, in a totally uncomplicated way. When I was in high school, I ran track and in the beginning I thought of training as a kind of necessary evil on the way to racing. But then, the more I ran, the more I realized that what I loved was running, and it didn’t much matter to me whether it came in the training form or the racing form. I feel the same way about writing. I’m happy writing anywhere and under any circumstances and in fact I’m now to the point where I’m suspicious of people who don’t love what they do in the same way. I was watching golf, before Christmas, and the announcer said of Phil Mickelson that the tournament was the first time he’d picked up a golf club in five weeks. Assuming that’s true, isn’t that profoundly weird? How can you be one of the top two or three golfers of your generation and go five weeks without doing the thing you love? Did Mickelson also not have sex with his wife for five weeks? Did he give up chocolate for five weeks? Is this some weird golfer’s version of Lent that I’m unaware of? They say that Wayne Gretzky, as a 2-year-old, would cry when the Saturday night hockey game on TV was over, because it seemed to him at that age unbearably sad that something he loved so much had to come to end, and I’ve always thought that was the simplest explanation for why Gretzky was Gretzky. And surely it’s the explanation as well for why Mickelson will never be Tiger Woods.
This whole exchange, which continues tomorrow, is fascinating.
Walter Cronkite Telling the Truth About the War on Drugs:
Today, our nation is fighting two wars: one abroad and one at home. While the war in Iraq is in the headlines, the other war is still being fought on our own streets. Its casualties are the wasted lives of our own citizens.
I am speaking of the war on drugs.
And I cannot help but wonder how many more lives, and how much more money, will be wasted before another Robert McNamara admits what is plain for all to see: the war on drugs is a failure.
Key quote: “Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent on this effort - with no one held accountable for its failure.”
“I run both spyware and virus scans nightly on my Windows computers, and I advise all Windows broadband users to do so.” [emphasis added]
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In this wicked little book, Julie Jackson reinvents the age-old craft of cross-stitch, finally putting an end to all that saccharine sentimentalism and giving modern stitchers the chance to say what’s really on their minds. Stitch up Bitch in Kitchen for a heartfelt housewarming gift. Spread cheer with the ever-festive “Bite Me”. Or whip up “This Place Sucks” for a cherished co-worker.
Link via kottke.org
At the Freakonomics Blog, Steven Levitt talks a little about his project to study cheating in online poker. NewMexiKen doesn’t gamble but I have grown somewhat addicted to computer poker (myself against the software). I found Leavitt’s closing paragraphs amusing.
Because of these two projects on poker, I figured I better play a little myself to understand the game better. I was surprised how much fun it was. I was a big loser initially, even in low stakes games. Now I’m still a loser, but not as much, and at much higher stakes. I’ve even had the honor (??) of losing to the guys who just got caught cheating.
But the best news is that my wife Jeannette quickly picked up the game and now does not consider her day complete if she can’t slip in a few sit-n-go no limit hold ‘em tournaments after the kids go to sleep. I married well.
… of author Tom Wolfe. He’s 76.
“I can’t read him because he’s such a bad writer,” Irving said of Wolfe. When Solomon added that “Bonfire of the Vanities” author Wolfe is “having a war” with Updike and Mailer, Irving dismissed the notion out of hand: “I don’t think it’s a war because you can’t have a war between a pawn and a king, can you?”
Irving described Wolfe’s novels as “yak” and “journalistic hyperbole described as fiction … He’s a journalist … he can’t create a character. He can’t create a situation.”
… of author John Irving. He’s 64.
Reached through his publisher, Wolfe responded in writing. “Why does he sputter and foam so?” he asked about Irving. “Because he, like Updike and Mailer, has panicked. All three have seen the handwriting on the wall, and it reads: ‘A Man in Full.’”
If the literary trio don’t embrace “full-blooded realism,” Wolfe warns, “then their reputations are finished.” He also offers Irving some additional literary advice: “Irving needs to get up off his bottom and leave that farm in Vermont or wherever it is he stays and start living again. It wouldn’t be that hard. All he’d have to do is get out and take a deep breath and talk to people and see things and rediscover the fabulous and wonderfully bizarre country around him: America.”
… of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Lou Reed. He’s 64.
The influence of the Velvet Underground on rock greatly exceeds their sales figures and chart numbers. They are one of the most important rock and roll bands of all time, laying the groundwork in the Sixties for many tangents rock music would take in ensuing decades. Yet just two of their four original studio albums ever even made Billboard’s Top 200, and that pair – The Velvet Underground and Nico (#171) and White Light/White Heat (#199) – only barely did so. If ever a band was “ahead of its time,” it was the Velvet Underground. Brian Eno, cofounder of Roxy Music and producer of U2 and others, put it best when he said that although the Velvet Underground didn’t sell many albums, everyone who bought one went on to form a band. The New York Dolls, Patti Smith, the Sex Pistols, Talking Heads, U2, R.E.M., Roxy Music and Sonic Youth have all cited the Velvet Underground as a major influence. (Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum)
… of Jon Bon Jovi. New Jersey’s second most famous rock-and-roller is 44.
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… was born 102 years ago today.
When Theodor Seuss Geisel was awarded an honorary degree at Princeton in 1985, the entire graduating class stood and recited Green Eggs and Ham.
Green Eggs and Ham is the third largest selling book in the English language — ever.
Green Eggs and Ham à la Sam-I-Am
1-2 tablespoons of butter or margarine
4 slices of ham
8 eggs
2 tablespoons of milk
1-2 drops of green food coloring
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1/4 teaspoon of pepper
… was authorized on this date in 1889. It was designated Casa Grande Ruins National Monument in 1918.
For over a thousand years, prehistoric farmers inhabited much of the present-day state of Arizona. When the first Europeans arrived, all that remained of this ancient culture were the ruins of villages, irrigation canals and various artifacts. Among these ruins is the Casa Grande, or “Big House,” one of the largest and most mysterious prehistoric structures ever built in North America. Casa Grande Ruins, the nation’s first archeological preserve, protects the Casa Grande and other archeological sites within its boundaries. You are invited to see the Casa Grande and to hear the story of the ancient ones the Akimel O’otham call the Hohokam, “those who are gone.”
… was proclaimed on this date in 1909. It became Olympic National Park in 1938.
Glacier capped mountains, wild Pacific coast and magnificent stands of old-growth forests, including temperate rain forests — at Olympic National Park, you can find all three. About 95% of the park is designated wilderness, which further protects these diverse and spectacular ecosystems.
Olympic is also known for its biological diversity. Isolated for eons by glacial ice, and later the waters of Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the Olympic Peninsula has developed its own distinct array of plants and animals. Eight kinds of plants and 15 kinds of animals are found on the peninsula but no where else on Earth.
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